What’s Happening: Aspen ArtWeek countered notions of a contracting art market and proved the resort town’s crop of well-heeled weekenders have a reason to visit in the summer, too.

The Download: When the pandemic sent wealthy city-dwellers decamping to glitzy enclaves like Palm Beach, the Hamptons, and Aspen, art dealers naturally followed. “You go where the money is,” Sotheby’s executive Lisa Dennison said at the time. Such is the logic behind the inaugural edition of Aspen Art Fair, which brought more than 20 galleries and crowds of well-heeled collectors to the resort town during Aspen ArtWeek. Though reports indicate global art market spending has shrunk ten percent over the past year, specters of market turmoil eluded the weeklong festivities, which ended on August 2.

Nearly every component of the fair reflects the shrewd business acumen of co-founder Rebecca Hoffman, an art-world veteran who helped rebrand the Outsider Art Fair and develop Intersect Art and Design. Instead of setting Aspen Art Fair in a drab convention center, she opted for the Hotel Jerome, a 135-year-old red-brick treasure of a resort sporting chalet-like rooms. Galleries like Perrotin, Miles McEnery, and Southern Guild set up booths on the ground floor while dealers like Guy Rusha volunteered their own hotel rooms. Odd vignettes ensued, like a tentacular Sienna Shields sculpture sprawling across Rusha’s bed; when he went to sleep, he simply pushed it aside.

The Aspen Art Fair was hardly the week’s only draw. Intersect Art and Design brought 31 galleries to the Aspen Ice Garden in the city’s quaint West End, where heavyweights like Fernando Mastrangelo and Meghann Riepenhoff plumbed how art interacts with design and the environment. Outside the fairs, Lena Henke hosted an invitation-only hike and Ryan Trecartin staged a concert on the summit of Aspen Mountain that required riding a chair lift. Capping the week off was the annual ArtCrush Gala, which celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Aspen Art Museum’s Shigeru Ban–designed building and auctioned works by Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Emma McIntyre, and Allison Katz.

In Their Own Words: “Aspen is one of those places that has a certain kind of magic that’s hard to describe,” Isabelle Bscher, who runs Galerie Gmurzynska, told Aspen Times. “It’s also an opportunity to show things in a completely different setting for people. People have more time during the summer. They go for a hike or a bike ride in the morning, but then in the afternoon, they have more time to look around and are less stressed than in the city.”

Surface Says: Just don’t forget your altitude sickness medication.

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Tucked just off the cascading right hand surf breaks of the El Zonte coastline, bookable villa Al Suave combines a vanguard of household names in furniture design with bespoke and artisan-made finishes from local talents. Spanish studios Cincopatasalgato and Pepe Cabrera Homes worked collaboratively on the oceanfront home, whose five bedrooms, kitchen, gardens, and sitting rooms provide ample space for indoor-outdoor living. The home’s sinuous, river-inspired pool and natural cooling system help, too.

The firms looked to natural materials, like Honduran wood, Salvadoran bricks, as well as Mexican and Costa Rican glass to create a soothing interior evocative of Al Suave’s beachy surroundings. Inside, accent pieces from the likes of Carl Hansen & Søn and Andreu World frame custom commissions, like the beds and sofa designed by Paula Cabrera Gil. With its plethora of floor-to-ceiling windows and gauzy sheer curtains swaying in the ocean breeze, we wouldn’t blame anyone who simply preferred to watch the waves rather than surf them.

BAS Stone tends to do things differently than your typical stone yard. More than 650 exceptional variations of natural stone sit within the family-owned supplier’s 42,000-square-foot warehouse, located just beyond the Midtown Tunnel on a quiet block of Long Island City. The team frequently visits Tuscan quarries to ensure their stock both surprises and delights a loyal client base of builders, designers, and architects who often trek out to Queens in search of uncommon statement pieces for their projects. When visitors see the full extent of BAS Stone’s inventory, they often become entranced with rare varieties and end up choosing an entirely different slab.

More of those surprises will certainly await inside the yard now that the supplier has expanded their footprint. Complementing the warehouse is a spacious new 4,500-square-foot showroom complete with an artfully designed communal area outfitted with a bar, lounge, and meeting space intended as a collaborative creative hub. “The grand opening is a special moment for our team as we strive to redefine the world of stone,” says Katibelle Sharkey, BAS Stone’s creative director. “BAS represents the future of the stone world, offering a fresh and creative perspective on what the industry can be. This new showroom represents that future.”

As the leather and writing instrument maison prepares to celebrate the centenary of its renowned Meisterstück pen, it seems to have turned to fragrance as a storytelling medium. The lineup of four scents in its Montblanc Collection—Black Meisterstück, Patchouli Ink, Extreme Leather, and Vetiver Glacier—launches later this month and pays homage to the brand’s deep roots in writing culture and leatherworking. For proof, look no further than the bottles themselves, which are shaped like ink vessels. From $140.

Studio Plow is a San Francisco–based architecture and design studio known for an aesthetic that’s restrained, yet warm and soulful. Each project is seen as a new opportunity for discovery, resulting in completely bespoke design. Working in collaboration with clients, the studio crafts a narrative that uncovers the soul of each space, mapping its full potential.

Surface Says: This studio’s colorful creations are a feast for the eyes, and sometimes even the nose: Their range of clever and often humorous designs includes Pop Art–inspired scratch-and-sniff options.

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